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Topic: when and how to capture a wild hive (Read 2161 times)

I have an interesting problem and I am hoping that you might be kind enough to give me your advise ............ A retired sea captain who is a little on the eccentric side has built a house that looks like an old tramp steamer, all done up with flags flying bridge, and actual brass port holes set in the walls , a small gap between the cement and outer edge brass porthole made a nice cozy place to swarm to, two of them are now inhabited, some cleaver scouts!!!!!!!!! . What I would like to know is if it is best to capture them at night when everyone is home, cut them loose, put em in a nuke with a few frames and leave the brood and comb off to the side and remove it later when abandoned , or should I tie the comb to an empty frame with a natural fiber and let them continue filling it in??????????? What would you do, Should I take them in the morning??????, would be a shame for the girls to come back from work with there mommy gone and there house sealed up........Please send your advise, thank you

a small gap between the cement and outer edge brass porthole made a nice cozy place to swarm to, two of them are now inhabited, some cleaver scouts!!!!!!!!! .

What I would like to know is if it is best to capture them at night when everyone is home, cut them loose, put em in a nuke with a few frames and leave the brood and comb off to the side and remove it later when abandoned ,

or should I tie the comb to an empty frame with a natural fiber and let them continue filling it in???????????

What would you do, Should I take them in the morning??????, would be a shame for the girls to come back from work with there mommy gone and there house sealed up........Please send your advise, thank you

If you handle them at night, bees are furious. They attac dedly. Once I worked at night with wild swarm and I got 600 stings during 12 hours. I calculated 50 stings per hour.

Shoose a nice day when bees are calm. Cut comb off and put them into frames. Flexible iron wire will be good because it is easy to tie.

Put frames into new home/super and let bees find the new home. When they all are inside home att night, seal them with iron net that hrey give good air during transport. Tighten carefully and strongly the packet.

I'm glad to see this post, with so much information in it. I'd wondered myself about how they should go about this. I'd thought night time would be bad.

I'll add one thing to this, that I just learned today while watching my hives. The bees know fairly well how to find their own home if it's still close by. I tried "tricking" them today by switching the hive positions, hoping that the foraging bees from the strong hive would enter the weaker hive. I guess it only works if the hives are really far from eachother when you switch them. Mine are right next to eachother. Well the bees from the strong hive went right back to their own hive, even though the hives were switched. I believe they must have been able to smell their own queen or something, and I never even thought of this as a possibility when I did it. Otherwise I wouldn't have even bothered switching the hives. I know they must have a pretty good sense of smell considering they can find sweet stuff (flowers, soda, beer, sweet food) so easily. I don't know how they do it really, but I can put out a scrapped frame that I've harvested honey from, and there will be bees on it within 30 minutes or less.

I believe they must have been able to smell their own queen or something, and I never even thought of this as a possibility when I did it. Beth

Bees have "landmap" in their head. If you move a nest 50 cm they fly to nest. They navigate with their eyes. If you move more, they fly empty place. It takes a couple of hours to accustom with new situation.

Bees also have also scent of their of home. If you change a place between nets, many bees are astonished. They turn from door because home do not scent like home.

But trick is unnecessarry and fatal. There is guards at entrance whose duty is to kill sudden visitors.